The Walking Dead Season 2

By: Telltale Games

Reviewed By: Nicki Conant

The Walking Dead: Season 2 is an episodic interactive drama/adventure game developed by Telltale games. It’s inspired by the comic book series, The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman. It’s your job to go through the life of a young girl, Clementine, in her survival of the zombie apocalypse. The game is based around your decisions and each episode will involve the choices that you make.

Now, assuming that you’ve played the first season, it’s supposed to continue the story not long after everything that has happened. This time, you are playing as the loved and praised child, Clementine and it offers an entirely new perspective which is something I was looking forward to when picking up the season pass.

Episode 1: All That Remains

Overall Rating: 4.3/5

I wasn’t too impressed with the game play, but I figured that it could just be the fact that I am, in fact, used to playing a man who is more than willing and capable of handling himself. I did, however, love the fact that the choices I had made in Season 1 were transferred over into Season 2 and it did, in fact, seem to affect how the characters interacted with one another.

Graphics: 5/5

One of the things I love the most about this game is that it’s cell-shaded. This means that there’s enough detail to make things look real and pretty, but there’s still enough to make it look like it’s from an actual comic. It really brings the feel of reading the comics to life for the player.

Sound: 4/5

I have one complaint about playing an innocent child, and that’s her whiney voice whenever she’s in a hard situation. They seem to use the same whines over and over again if she’s ever stuck in a sticky situation and it just gets very irritating. Aside from that, I love the fact that even when characters are farther away, you can still hear everything that they’re saying. Sound clarity is pretty good.

Gameplay: 5/5

The first episode allows for a lot of gameplay, a lot of moving around, trying to find tools, find food, find survivors. It also leaves for several choices, several parts where I have to choose how the people will perceive me and how to survive as the small child that I am. I have as many choices as I did in the first season and it looks like it will be a decent season as far as gameplay goes because of it.

Episode 2: A House Divided

Upon learning a little bit about what their history was, I’m faced with deciding how to help out my new companions. We are a house that is truly divided on how to handle different situations and I had made the choice of pretending that I was alone in the cabin when Carver had arrived. Not knowing what the hell I’d gotten myself into, I probably made a few mistakes in making conversation with him, but I did the best that I could to protect the people I was now staying with. I was, after all, trying to get them to trust/like me if they hadn’t in the first episode.

After Carver arrived and I did my best to deter him, we had decided that the best thing to do was to leave where we were and try and make a new home elsewhere. Again, as we would walk, I was trying to make conversation enough so that people would like me, but you can’t win everyone’s hearts and I suppose that’s what’s so good about the game, it’s real.

As we approached the bridge to reach the cabin on the other side, we were stopped by a man with a gun. Trying to reason with him, we thought all was going well until he pulled his gun on us because we had allowed for something to slip (mainly me). He claimed he had food and electricity where he was staying, but before anything could be exchanged, he had been offed just like that.

After freaking out, and becoming angry with one another, I tried to side with the middle so that I didn’t pick just one side but we all know that usually never works. Finally finding the cabin the man was talking about, I was only able to scavenge a few cans of beans and that’s about it. The cabin was pretty empty after that. This then leads to more arguing about what to do next.

Finding a happy medium, we continue up the hill and find a lodge. It isn’t until we’re greeted by the owners that a seriously big surprise comes up. Now, I’m not going to spoil one of the best surprises, so I’ll try to continue with what happens without revealing anything major.

Finding a new home with welcoming company, we try and celebrate Christmas with a dinner and a turbine powered home with lights and food. It isn’t until a woman approaches the cabin asking for food that trouble starts. Everyone is on high tension, and unsure what to think of the woman, but she leaves without issues…so far.

A herd of zombies comes by and we have to shut the turbine off because it’s simply making way too much noise. Of course, being the smallest of the group, I’m the one that’s forced to fix the turbine. After getting it fixed, however, is when we’re attacked by the walkers, and we have to fight them off before going back inside.

Meanwhile, it is revealed that the man that had been killed earlier, was one of the men that was a part of the group we were staying with. This only lead to more trouble, but the humble ‘owner’ of the building allowed us to live instead.

The woman I was previously talking about? She comes back, big guns in tow and two men beside her. One of them happens to be Carver. Hiding with Rebecca, the pregnant woman with an attitude, and her husband/boyfriend, Alvin, we discuss that it’s a good idea to try and find Luke and company to help them. So, again, because I’m small, I’m chosen to sneak out of the window and to try and find them.

The angered company decides that it’s a good idea to shoot one of Carver’s men, and this leads to a few of our group getting killed (big surprise there) by Carver. Eventually choosing to give in, we are then taken away with bags over our head and carried off to god knows where.

The Walking Dead: Season 2 – Episode 2: A House Divided was a good, action packed episode. I thought it was a pretty good transition between the first episode and the third. It left you wanting more and waiting to find out what happens next as Telltale games did in the first season of this series.

Episode 3: In Harm’s Way

Note: Due to the fact that there are simply too man spoilers up ahead, I’m going to leave vague descriptions of what happens and I will give short responses to how I like the progression of the game as well as ratings for each episode.

Discovering that you’re now in a moving vehicle all tied up with the others, you discuss how truly messed up the situation is, and there is of course, tension among everyone about what’s going to happen next and how to handle it. As always, I tried to play the peacekeeper and again, as always, it didn’t entirely work out which makes me wonder why I’m even bothering anymore but we’ll get to that at some other point.

You meet new characters and begin to learn about the backgrounds of the people you’ve already met and you are faced with more challenging choices as you would expect from the game’s previous play options. This episode consisted of more dialog than anything, and perhaps that’s the reason I was most disappointed in it.

I wasn’t all too thrilled about this episode. The amount of gameplay has completely decreased and it’s now about how you react to different situations and how you talk to people. You don’t really walk through different things, and to be honest, while you did turn the PA system on and grab the walkie talkie, the rest was just cinematic and I was actually kind of disappointed.

I will say, however, that the story line for the game continues to get better. It’s a type of game that gets you attached to different characters and then leaves you with the hard decision of watching some come, watching some go, and watching some just plain up die. Getting the people to like you or to hate you is really important in this situation and I think that’s what the most compelling part of the game is. Your choices really do effect how everything will work for you.

Episode 4: Amid the Ruins

In this episode, you’re faced with the challenge of finding shelter once more as well as trying to decide who is safe to trust in your new group and who isn’t. Your group is now varied, now hanging on by threads with one another and with themselves and it seems like there’s no hope for anyone. New challenges await you in this episode and it’s only going to get better from here.

As in the previous episode, the amount of game play is very limited. You look for a jacket or blanket here and there, you cry and moan about some zombies attacking you, and that’s about it. You may have to save a few people once or twice, but other than that, you’re either watching the cinematic of characters reacting or you’re pressing buttons to try and make choices for whose side to join.

I will say that this episode is probably the second most stressful episode in the five part season. It isn’t so much with the choices that you have to make, it’s with you trying to keep the peace between your group and the things that are no longer in your control. You’re reminded that people are hard to trust and it makes it hard to play a little girl because there are so many things you want to say but coming from an 11-year-old girl, you know people will either not take you seriously or look at you with uneasiness.

I am curious, however, as to what the episode would be like had I made other choices which leaves me with the idea that the replay value of this episode is pretty high. The ending left me with an ultimate cliff hanger that I wasn’t sure I was prepared for and it was because of that, that I wondered what it would be like had I chosen differently on several different occasions. This means that despite the amount of game play getting reduced, this was one of my favorite episodes thus far.

Episode 5: No Going Back

Okay wow, this episode was filled with PLENTY of feels as well as some major surprises and heart break. It also involves heavy spoilers that I really can’t discuss so I’m going to have to leave this episode a rather vague description.

This episode is jam-packed with decisions. Every second counts in this episode and it really pulls at your strings leaving the game to be the same that it was in the first season, making you want more. Initially, you’re unsure of how everything will turn out, and to be honest, you don’t really know what’s going to happen next so the only thing you can do is hope to God you’ve made the right decisions and if not, enjoy the ride.

Now, the replay value on this episode is very high. As I said before, you’re making several choices, and many of them affect not only you, but the people around you and for that, you really have to choose wisely. It got to a point where I was almost afraid to make my own decisions, so I would ask my boyfriend what he thought would be the appropriate answer and neither of us were prepared for whatever would follow our choices.

This episode reminded me why I enjoy Telltale game’s version of this widely known series and I loved every second of this episode. I will attempt to let you know that your ‘feels’ will forever be broken as they were at the end of the first season, and you will go down memory lane just when you thought you wouldn’t.

Final Rating: 4/5

I give this a 4/5 not because of the choices that I made, but because the gameplay isn’t what it used to be. A majority of this season involves you talking and that’s about it. Yes, there were parts in specific episodes where the gameplay was high, but I was sort of disappointed that you weren’t able to do more. I also give it a low rating because the ending of this game was something less than what I was hoping.

At the end of the first season, I wanted more hence my buying the Season 2 Season Pass when I first heard of its release. The end of this season left me saying “Really? That’s it?” My boyfriend who watched me go through so many emotions and felt said emotions himself was left kind of disappointed about how the season ended, but I’m still curious as to what they’re going to do for the third season.

Over all, I would say get this game but if you do, play it for the story line and not because you liked the first one. If you’re playing it to compare it to the first (which I mistakenly did) then do not get it. The game is worth a replay, but at the same time I’m unsure of whether or not I want to even bother because of the lack of game play. So in the end, I suppose it’s your choice (see what I did there?).